Poodles, Panda Bears, and the SL Economy

The poodle avatars have finally been updated. I redid the legs, adjusted the muzzle, modified a little texturing, and stuffed them back in the vendors. If you've bought an older one and you want the new model, IM or email me.

Narsil made a cool panda bear avatar. Drop by my main shop and check it out!

I changed the tail in the Neko Add-on kit to one I like better.

Zee Linden blogged about the Second Life Economy.

Picture

Didn't spend much time in SL this weekend. I spent most of it in RL running amok in orchards or covered to the elbows in peach juice. Narsil had fun making a doll version of one of my avatars. Isn't my twin cute?

Big Finance, Little Grid

Login and sim down problems have been plaguing the grid. *grumbles*

Ginko's down. Doesn't hit me personally, but I know some people who used it. Including more than one who didn't realize Ginko was having serious problems - they thought the ATMs weren't working because of a tech problem. Apparently any money in it is being converted to bonds (promises of future money) which you can sell. The whole banking-in-SL concept seems crazy to me because of the lack of oversight and legal recourse. Their returns just didn't make sense.

It has me wondering whether there are any venture-capital funds in SL, and whether the people picking the ponies are any good at it. I suspect there aren't - just not enough money in it yet to draw them in. I know there's groups that do VC rounds for themselves (if I remember right Sarah Nerd's a good example.)

Stuff. And stuff.

Caught up with a friend and chatted. Still trying to catch up with Dalien. Worked a bit on the deer avatar. I like it and I think I'll end up selling it, but I need to catch up with Amad and see if he likes it and how he wants his custom version to look if he does. Organized and archived my 2D SL graphics files.

Too many ideas, not enough time. Elevators, Nekos, Skyboxes, Blacklight and spotlights, the Landmark HUD of wonderful-ness, updated poodles, and a bunch of socializing too. I have places and things I want to build for my own amusement, and some scripting experiments I want to do.

I think I'll blame it on the time of year. :D It is harvest season, back-to-school season is starting, the weather is horribly hot, and people get all frentic and full of energy and plans.

Gesturing at the weekend

I didn't get the market eval done, but I finished everything else. Sales did well this weekend too.

Marianne's fireworks are awesome.

The big secret to gestures seems to be "Don't edit an active gesture."

TODO

TODO by Monday:
Get Hittail tracking onto the Toolbox.
Prep financials for August
Do a neko market eval.
Go to (Sat 7pm) RCFM party
Go to Marianne's fireworks (Sat 8pm)

Empty bottles.

When you're feeling really down, drunk, and thinking about someone who's been dead for a couple years, don't customize avatars. Just. Don't.

The fingers are too long, and the expression isn't quite right, but the build is, and that's his nose. He'd never have worn those pants though.

Ghost? Memory? Avatar? Are they equally real? Unreal? Do they have any meaning beyond what we give them?

Fuck. This hurts.

I don't know whether to save or delete it.

Spotlighting the long tail of tecture moving?

Spent a little time yesterday working on my spotlight scripts. The interface is proving to be the hardest part; I may end up writing a notecard to go with it. I'm still trying to decide if I want to sell one spotlight with many features, or several different spotlights. I may also make one that doesn't track.

Hittail's results for the last day don't hold too many surprises. A lot of inquiries into mega prims, lsl and lsl functions, building avatars. The one for "japan boxes tecture moving" wins the wtf prize. My curiosity insisted I google that, but I still don't understand what they were looking for.

Speaking of textures, Robin Wood / Robin Sojourner has a script fix for some of the lsl animation offset troubles available free at her texture tutorial inworld.

Project ramblings.

Along with all the other things I've been messing with, I'm trying to decide between getting some sort of inworld group project going involving making avatars and doing a series on building skyboxes above the edit zone. Might do both.

Vint Falken found Hittail, it sounds neat. I must try it. If nothing else, it may make a good idea generator. Like I don't already have too many ideas and not enough time. *grin*

I've started prim-wrangling for the anthro deer avatar I was talking to Amad about. Kind of cartoony but I'm liking it. Trying to make matched reflected torii is a pain. I think I'll reuse most of the hoof from the catyrs. Still considering redoing the poodles when I'm done this - I want to redo their legs and add more detail to the skins.

Landmarks, webrings, and slurls... I know the basics of what I want to do with it, but I need to work out the details. I think I can work within an existing service like Gridmarker, but I want to be sure before I start hacking.

Vendor ramblings

I've been noticing some vendor migration patterns. Themed shopping zones are built, they're inhabited by 80-90% of the same vendors selling the same products. The zones have a rush of business for a few months, the same vendors move out as sales drop, then a new place appears with the same theme and the cycle repeats. There's some zones that aren't part of the cycle. They have strong events and/or have a purpose from outside of SL.

So with the short-time zones... how do I want to use them? As vending locations (and leaving a location when it isn't profitable?) As a form of marketing, and if so would I do better to get poster space instead? What about outright marketing - do I want to look for poster space in themed non-vendor areas, set up or work with events, etc? Do I want to set up something to count views (ie note whenever someone interacts with my stuff?)

A large portion of my grid sales are at my main shop, but many of those are via Search, and that puts me at the mercy of a functioning Search. I've been using the Store HUD, SLExchange, and including transferable pictures in my products and I suspect over time those decrease my reliance on Search.

And working more seriously with other vendors - do I want to look for partners to consolidate marketing efforts? If I do, would I rather go with the themed landmarks idea or would something like Luskwood's all-partners-at-one-site arrangement be more effective? How would I want to deal with the land and marketing sides of such a business arrangement? I know how badly a friends-to-housemate arrangement can go, and from the stories I've heard friends-to-business partner is much the same.

How much energy am I willing to put into it, and how much am I willing to commit long term to sustain it? What I've got right now is little effort - track transactions, pay a couple rental boxes, pay Chantal once a month, and take care of my tier. I get 10x more support conversations about my freebies than my products. They're usually about sound features (usually looking for a song player) that aren't in the Sound Prims package.